(The Center Square) – Oversight of commercial driver’s licensing programs drew increased scrutiny across the nation in 2025, punctuated in North Carolina by 78 removed from a federal registry.
Two of at least eight bills in Congress, each in the House of Representatives, are authored by North Carolina Republican Reps. Pat Harrigan and David Rouzer. A proposed rule change from the U.S. Department of Transportation in September has been temporarily halted by a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia.
The rule change would be immediate, and the congressional action would have a chance at being more sustaining through changing presidential administrations.
An eastern North Carolina Baptist church, the Head Start program and a community college are among the entities with involuntary closures of CDL training programs in North Carolina, research from TCS shows. Of the 3,015 training providers for commercial driver’s licenses removed from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Training Provider Registry, 61 in North Carolina were involuntary and 17 voluntary.
Another 86 were among the nationwide 4,554 put on notice for potential noncompliance, TCS research shows. The U.S. Department of Transportation on Dec. 1 said providers receiving a notice of proposed removal have 30 days to respond and provide evidence in order to avoid removal.
The auditing process has been ongoing throughout the second term of Republican President Donald Trump. Increased scrutiny of CDL licensure programs happened after triple-fatal crashes 66 days apart involving 18-wheelers in Florida and California.
For Congress, safety is paramount in the discussion. Collateral damage, however, includes American truckers losing jobs and experiencing wage reductions from less expensive labor invading their home soil.
“If you come legally, or you have a visa, or you’re coming from one state to another, you can get a nondomiciled CDL,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a network interview earlier this month. “These are the licenses that these foreigners are using. But to tighten up the rules means we’re going to have more safety on American roads.
“There were 200,000 nondomiciled CDLs issued to foreigners. We think 194,000 of them were issued illegally and would not comply with our new rule.”
The bills from Harrigan and Rouzer, respectively, are the SAFE Drivers Act (House Resolution 5800), and the Non-Domiciled CDL Integrity Act (HR5688). The SAFE Drivers Act includes the acronym for Standardized Assessment for Fluency in English for Drivers Act.
Of his bill, Harrigan says, “It creates one clear national requirement so every driver meets the same baseline, and every family can trust the standards that are supposed to protect them.”
Speaking of his proposal, Rouzer said, “This legislation ensures only individuals with lawful immigration status and a legitimate reason to operate commercial vehicles in the U.S. are entrusted with CDLs. We’re closing dangerous loopholes and restoring accountability. We must never, under any circumstance, jeopardize public safety by allowing those here illegally to get behind the wheel of a big rig.”
